Blog entry for Thursday, July 10
Although the Namibians seem to think we have an accent, we’ve experienced some vocabulary challenges with them as well. Who knew that a stop light was referred to as “robot”?
We’ve had some great meetings. On Tuesday, we met with PEPFAR, a US-based agency that provides much of the HIV/AIDS funding in Africa. On Wednesday, we met with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a US government agency that advises Namibian’s Ministry of Health on many HIV/AIDS policies, testing, etc. From these meetings, we’ve learned that Namibia has a better road infrastructure than many other African countries, so a centralized system of diagnostic testing works better than it would in other places. For example, on Monday, a mother takes her infant into a clinic in Rundu, which is 7 hours north of Windhoek (the capital city). A nurse or community health worker draws, dries and packs a small amount of blood for HIV testing. Within a couple days, a truck picks up on the sample and brings it to a central testing laboratory in Windhoek. This whole process takes a week, on average. Then, once at the lab, the test is processed in 48 hours and results are posted on a private website. The clinic then can access the results, and the mother will know the status of her infant by the following Wednesday. In many other countries, this process could take up to 3 or more weeks. However, we imagine that the 9-day waiting period can still be pretty painful for the mother, as she really wants to know whether her baby has HIV. So, we still are encouraged that a point-of-care infant diagnostic device might be a good fit for rural areas in Namibia.
Today (Thursday), Peter and I are taking a trip to Rehoboth, a town 80 km south of Windhoek. We are also visiting a small clinic in Rietoog, a town of outside of Rehoboth with a population of less than 1,000 people. We are excited to get the clinic’s input, since they do not have as easy access to roads and HIV testing. Jordan and Travis are going to a Windhoek township (aka suburb), Katutura, which in apartheid times, was a black area. (Jordan, can you explain this better?) At first, we were surprised that apartheid happened in Namibia, but then we remembered that Namibia only gained its independence from South Africa in 1990.
After about 12 meetings with international agencies, government and health care providers this week, we are headed to the dessert for some fun. We’ll see the dunes and eat good food. That’s about all I know. So, don’t worry if we don’t make a posting for a couple days… we won’t have internet access again until Monday! (This comment is primarily aimed towards our mothers! 
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- Erin
